Brad Warner
Brad Warner
1964 – Unknown
Brad Warner (born 5 March 1964 in Hamilton, Ohio) is an American Sōtō Zen priest, author, blogger, documentarian, and punk-rock bass guitarist — the most widely-read English-language teacher in the lineage of Gudō Wafu Nishijima[1]. He grew up mainly near Akron, Ohio (with a stint in Nairobi as a child while his father worked abroad), attended Kent State University, and as a teenager joined the hardcore punk band Zero Defex on bass after a friend introduced him to the Akron scene[1]. He later played in the psychedelic band Dimentia 13, which released several albums on the New York label Midnight Records.
Warner began Zen practice in Ohio under Tim McCarthy and later studied with the Jōdo Shinshū-influenced teacher Gyōmay Kubose[1]. After the financial failure of his Dimentia 13 albums he took a job in Japan with the JET Programme, and in 1994 joined **Tsuburaya Productions** — the company behind Ultraman — where he played the roles of various foreigners in their TV programs and worked in international licensing[1]. While in Japan he met Gudō Wafu Nishijima, became his student, and **in 2000 was ordained as a Sōtō priest and named one of Nishijima's dharma heirs**[1]. In 2007, Nishijima named Warner the leader of Dogen Sangha International. Warner dissolved that organisation in April 2012 and **moved to California, where he started Dogen Sangha Los Angeles** (later associated with the Angel City Zen Center)[1]. In 2013, the documentary *Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen*, directed by Pirooz Kalayeh, premiered at the Buddhist Film Festival of Europe in Amsterdam[1].
Warner's distinctive contribution is on the page and on the public Internet. His non-fiction books span Wisdom Publications, New World Library, and Monkfish, and have introduced Nishijima's plain-spoken reading of Dōgen to a vastly wider readership than his teacher reached in life[1]. The principal sequence runs from *Hardcore Zen* (2003) through the three-volume *Don't Be a Jerk* / *It Came from Beyond Zen!* / *The Other Side of Nothing* paraphrase of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō (2016, 2017, 2022); a complete catalogue with descriptions is in the Works section below.
Warner's other principal output is on the public web: he has maintained the Hardcore Zen blog continuously since the early 2000s, hosts the long-running Hardcore Zen Podcast, publishes dharma talks and Q&A sessions on his YouTube channel, and runs a Patreon that supports his ongoing teaching at Dogen Sangha Los Angeles[2]. His deliberately abrasive, demystifying style has made him one of the visible faces of contemporary American Zen.
Names
Teachers and lineage of Brad Warner
Teacher / root master:
Works
Warner's 2003 debut: a memoir-cum-primer that runs from his Akron hardcore-punk youth and his Tokyo years at Tsuburaya Productions (Ultraman) to his ordination as a Sōtō priest under Gudō Wafu Nishijima. It introduced a generation of English-speaking readers to Nishijima's plain-spoken Dōgen and remains the standard entry point to Warner's work.
Warner's 2007 follow-up to Hardcore Zen and his first sustained engagement with Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō, read fascicle by fascicle through a punk-rock lens. The book inaugurates the line of Dōgen-paraphrase writing that culminates in the Don't Be a Jerk / It Came from Beyond Zen / Other Side of Nothing trilogy.
A memoir of the year Warner's marriage ended, his mother died, and his Tsuburaya Productions job collapsed — and what those losses revealed about the difference between Zen practice and Zen as performance. One of the few Western Zen books built around personal catastrophe rather than instruction.
- Hardcore ZenSex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between
An extended treatment of the Buddhist precepts on sexual conduct from a contemporary Sōtō perspective, drawing on Dōgen, Warner's own teaching practice, and his correspondence with practitioners across orientations and arrangements. Written in the same plain-spoken register as the rest of the Hardcore Zen series.
A translation of and commentary on Nāgārjuna's foundational Madhyamaka verses, co-authored with Warner's teacher Gudō Wafu Nishijima. The volume is the principal English-language record of Nishijima's reading of Nāgārjuna alongside Dōgen, and the only Warner book co-authored with his teacher.
Warner's longest-running argument with theism and atheism alike: a sustained attempt to articulate a Zen non-theism that is also not a flat materialism. The book occasioned the Pirooz Kalayeh documentary Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen (2013).
Volume one of Warner's plain-English paraphrase of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō, working through selected fascicles with a running commentary. The book is the most accessible English-language entry into Shōbōgenzō currently in print and was followed by It Came from Beyond Zen! (2017) and The Other Side of Nothing (2022).
Volume two of the Shōbōgenzō paraphrase trilogy, continuing Warner's fascicle-by-fascicle reading of Dōgen. The book extends the Don't Be a Jerk format to a further set of Shōbōgenzō chapters, including the more philosophically demanding ones on time, being, and Buddha-nature.
- Hardcore ZenLetters to a Dead Friend About Zen
An epistolary introduction to Zen practice and doctrine written as letters to Warner's recently deceased childhood friend Marky. The form lets Warner cover the foundations — sitting, the precepts, karma, the dharma of friendship — in a tone closer to private correspondence than to his earlier polemics.
Volume three of the Shōbōgenzō paraphrase trilogy, focused on the ethical implications of Dōgen's non-dual reading of time and being. Warner uses Uji, Genjōkōan, and related fascicles to develop a contemporary account of how non-duality grounds — rather than dissolves — ordinary moral life.
Other masters in Sōtō
Master Record Sources
1964-
Brad Warner
Soto
Gudo Wafu Nishijima